Virginia's GOP Just Doesn't Get It

The Republicans in Virginia really don't get it. Faced with steady declines in recent elections and facing the loss of John Warner's Senate seat and possibly one or two congressional seats in November, they continue to do things that can only speed the state's tilt to blue.

For example, in the GOP controlled House of Delegates, the Republican leadership has decided to force controversial bills, which typically would die in a committee, to the House floor for a vote. Their goal is to "make" Democrats vote against these bills--typically socially conservative proposals on abortion, gay marriage, guns, sexual abstinence and the like--and get them "on the record."

As if voters in Virginia don't know which party favors those bills and which is against them. Despite that knowledge, Republicans have been losing races. Indeed, it's precisely because the GOP controlled legislature has been screwing around with conservative social engineering, instead of addressing the state's more serious problems, like transportation, that the Republicans have been losing ground.

Another example is a bill introduced by Republican Sen. Ken Cuccinelli, from Fairfax, who got re-elected by the smallest of margins. He's proposed that employers be allowed to fire workers who don't speak English. Mind you, this is not a bill aimed at illegal aliens--this bill would apply to workers who are CITIZENS, but have trouble with their English. (See "Bill Targets Workers Who Speak No English.") It's simply a mean-spirited bill aimed at Spanish speaking workers. (Somewhere is his ancestry, Cuccinelli certainly has a forebear who came over from Italy and couldn't speak English, at least for awhile, but who no doubt somehow worked hard so that his offspring could live a good life, not realizing they might turn out to be conservative jerks like Ken.)

If you look closely, you'll see that the Republicans never support any bill that would penalize employers for hiring illegals, despite knowledge that employers do it all the time to gain a competitive edge.

In any event, Cuccinelli's bill, which won't pass, will do nothing but piss-off the rapidly growing Hispanic community in Virginia, as well as other LEGAL voters of various ethnic backgrounds. Why in the world would Republicans want to do that?

Part of the problem is that the GOP losses in the General Assembly have come from the moderate wing of the party, which has gotten punished by moderate voters for the vitriol and intolerance of the party's right wing. As those moderates disappear, the rest of the party gets even more hardened and incapable of helping itself. Another part of the problem is that some of the geniuses behind these strategic blunders have gerrymandered themselves into impregnable districts, so they don't personally have to worry about the effects of their strategy.

As for us at the Curmudgeon, we're happy to see Republicans keep shooting themselves in the foot in the state. They're only hastening the transition of Virginia to a blue state.